


Serendipity

by loveandbeloved



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, and a helpful liam, and of course they fall in love in the end, involving car problems, pure fluff, this is just a drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 22:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14680953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandbeloved/pseuds/loveandbeloved
Summary: A self-indulgent drabble in which Zayn has a flat tire on the way home from college and Liam stops to help him out.





	Serendipity

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! So this story isn't one that I was super invested in, so it may seem a bit less put together than usual. It's actually just something that happened to me personally last February (minus the last part, but what's a Ziam fic if they don't become boyfriends and fall in love?) and I turned it into a fic because I've had a major lack of motivation lately and I needed to get something done. I'm working on another overdue birthday fic that should be out in the next week or so, but for now please enjoy! As always, comment to let me know what you think, and please please tell me if you find typos because there was virtually no editing involved. I may or may not come back in the future to fix this and expand on their relationship when I find some motivation.

Music pounds through the interior of Zayn’s car, Frank Ocean battling it out with the roar of his heater that’s on full blast to combat the rigid temperature outside.

Zayn thinks it should be a crime for the weather to be so dreary, but clearly Mother Nature doesn’t care about his opinion. Furthermore, Zayn thinks it should be a crime for his family to live in a place where the weather is routinely dreary for months on end, but apparently his parents don’t care about his opinion either.

It had snowed for two days on and off, stopping just hours before Zayn packed his car after his Friday classes ended to head north. The roads are clear, piles of snow off to the side where snowplows came through to push the snow away and salt the roads to prevent ice from forming if the sun warms the pavement.

They are already two weeks into January, and Zayn is officially twenty one as of two days ago. His parents called to wish him a happy birthday, and all of his sisters got on the line to sing to him. Of course, all of the women in his life had also pouted and begged until he agreed to come home for some family time because he has Monday off for Martin Luther King Junior Day.

Zayn thinks it’s a bit ridiculous to have a break just a week after the start of the semester, but 1) MLK was an amazing man and 2) it gives him the chance to celebrate his birthday with his family over a long weekend, and that’s enough motivation for him to make the two and a half hour drive to his family home.

He winds his way through town, cursing at the poorly timed stop lights that prevent his progress before finally reaching the highway. From there, he’s home free.

Zayn has very mixed feelings about going away to college. He loves his family and he’d love nothing more than to be able to stay home and go to school in the area. Unfortunately, the area in which his parents live has exactly zero decent schools, so going away was his only real option. It’s always hard leaving, and he gets homesick if he’s gone for too long, but at the same time, Zayn is proud of the little life he’s managed to build for himself over the past two and a half years.

He’s got his roommate, Niall, who he met at orientation and has clung to ever since. Niall and Zayn are opposites in a lot of ways, and by most people’s standards, they shouldn’t work as roommates, but they do. Niall drags Zayn out to be social on a regular basis so his classes don’t consume his soul, and Zayn forces Niall to sit down and study every few days so he can actually graduate next year.

(To be honest, Zayn has no idea how Niall is passing his classes. He watched all last semester as Niall’s sleep schedule got more and more confusing, until it came to the point that he slept through classes only to get up at ten pm with a plan to be up for the next twenty hours straight. It’s horrifying, and mildly fascinating, and Zayn is sure that he’d die if he tried to lead such an odd fluctuating life. On the bright side, Niall is never bothered when Zayn’s alarm for clinical goes off at four am)

Niall is outgoing enough that he made friends with their entire floor within a few weeks of the year starting, which meant that at any given time during the day, a random person might be in Zayn’s room. More often than not, that random person is either Josh, or Josh’s roommate Harry, or both. Josh is studying biochemical engineering, and Zayn’s not sure what Harry is studying, but it seems easy enough given the fact that Harry literally never does homework and yet is not failing.

Outside of the dorm, Zayn also has Louis aka his best friend and carpool buddy for clinical. School sucks balls, but it would suck even worse without Louis. At least Zayn has someone to roll his eyes at when their incompetent professors go on rants about irrelevant material that they won’t even be tested over.

Overall Zayn is pretty proud of himself for being a semi-independent adult with responsibilities, friends and a 4.0 GPA. He seems to have this adulting thing under control.

He cruises along for several miles, absent mindedly humming along with the radio. His Going Home playlist is almost three hours long, just in case he runs into traffic or bad roads along the way, and it’s never failed him yet.

If he makes good time, he’ll be home before seven. Zayn glances down at the dashboard of his car, quirking an eyebrow at the check engine light that’s on.

Zayn loves his car to pieces, but like every car, it has its issues, one of which is the fact that it likes to warn Zayn of impending doom even when nothing is wrong. Zayn’s dad has taken the car to the shop multiple times to get the check engine light checked, only to find out that a sensor just fired incorrectly. With that in mind, he focuses on the road and lets his mind drift to his upcoming assignments for a bit.

He’s startled out of his thoughts by an odd thumping noise that only grows louder as he continues down the road. It only takes a few seconds for him to connect the dots and when he does, he groans aloud, turning on his blinker to pull over on the side of the road.

Zayn puts his car in park, getting out and taking a step back. Sure enough, his back left tire is as flat as Harry’s ass (not entirely flat, but flat enough that it’s not enough to work with.)

The one time that he relies on his car to be faking it, and it turns out to be a real emergency.

Zayn opens up the trunk, digging around to look for his spare tire. He finds it with minimal difficulty, peeling up the carpeted compartment to reach it, but to his dismay, his car jack is missing. Without a jack, there’s no way he’ll be able to change his tire.

“Fuck my life,” Zayn mutters, kicking at his tire before climbing back into his car with a shiver.

Niall doesn’t have a car, and Louis’ is in the shop to get his heater fixed (Zayn knows because he rode in it for an hour to go to orientation on Tuesday and it’s hard to forget that the car has no heat when it’s cold as tits outside).

He pulls out his phone to call home, letting his parents know that he won’t make it for dinner now. He’s still about two hours away from home, a fact that stresses his mom out to no end.

“Do you want your father to come and get you, darling?” she asks, worry laced in her voice. “It’s cold out there.”

“No mom, I’ll be fine,” Zayn assures.

“Just call AAA and let them know where you are. They can send someone with a jack,” Zayn’s dad advises. “Call us and let us know what’s going on.”

“Will do,” Zayn promises.

This is almost too far into adult territory for Zayn’s comfort, but it has to be done, so Zayn digs around in his glove compartment to find his insurance information and calls the number on the card.

It can’t be that hard, right?

It turns out that The American Automobile Association has a very interesting phone menu. After the fifth “Press one for.. two for..” menu, with no option to talk to a real person, Zayn is nearly convinced that they don’t actually want him to get any assistance. If he listens closely, he thinks that he can hear someone on the other end of the phone laughing at him.

Finally, Zayn miraculously is connected to a real live human being. Humans are so much more competent than computers. She seems very nice as she takes his information, asking about him and the nature of the call. It goes smoothly, until she asks for his location.

He gives her the road name and nearest mile marker, and she spends nearly five minutes silently studying her map, before asking him if he’s near a town that’s not even in his state. So much for that whole competency thing.

After they establish the road he’s on, she then assumed he was traveling south and promptly informed him that the mile marker he reported doesn’t exist. Somehow it takes another fifteen minutes for her to actually pin down his location accurately (he hopes).

“Alright sir, with all the recent snow we are a little backed up, but we’ll dispatch someone to your location as soon as possible. We’ll call you with an estimated time of arrival as soon as we have one. Thanks for calling,” she chirps before hanging up. Zayn just wants to bang his head against the window.

He calls his parents again, letting them know that he’s on the wait list, and then he settles back to wait.

And wait. And wait.

And wait.

At first it’s not so bad. Zayn just sits on his phone and scrolls through his apps, playing games and glancing at social media on occasion.

At one point, about thirty minutes in, a police officer pulled over to ask if Zayn if he needed any help. Zayn waved him off though, explaining that a tow truck was on the way to help him curtesy of AAA Roadside Assistance.

But after two hours of waiting, Zayn is actually very concerned that the lady didn’t do her job correctly, and now he’s just sitting by the side of the road alone as it gets dark out with no help on the way.

He calls his dad back to let him know that he hasn’t heard anything, and then gathers himself and calls AAA again.

This time he gets a man, who looks over Zayn’s previous complaint on record and informs him that he is still on the list, but they are extremely swamped this evening.

“It looks like we can have a guy there in about 45-50 minutes sir. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

And so, Zayn settles in to wait some more, opening a bag of chips to munch on while he waits. Luckily he’s always prepared with enough snacks to feed a small army, so at least he won’t go hungry.

The sun finally sets, disappearing behind the horizon, and darkness falls quickly. There are hardly any cars on the road, which makes Zayn feels extremely isolated and vulnerable, almost as if his life has somehow taken a drastic turn and he’s now the perfect candidate for a serial killer to target. Just to be safe, he locks the doors.

Thirty minutes later, Zayn is in the middle of scrolling through a riveting thread of iconic memes curtesy of Twitter. He happens to glance up into his rearview mirror, and sees a pair of headlights.

Every other driver, save the police officer, has driven on past, and Zayn waits for this one to do the same. Instead, this car pulls over into the shoulder behind Liam.

What the driver probably failed to realize is, due to the recent snow, the shoulder is very slick, and trying to stop is very difficult. To Zayn’s horror, he watches as the rear end car behind him begins to weave back and forth as the driver attempts to hit the brakes.

“First a flat tire, and now I’m going to get rear ended,” Zayn mutters in disbelief, putting his car into drive to roll forward just in case.

Miraculously, the other car manages to stop in time, just a few feet short of Zayn’s bumper. Zayn snorts, heart still racing a bit because apparently being good with cars doesn’t mean that you’re good at driving them.

Still, it would appear that help has arrived, earlier than predicted too, so Zayn won’t complain. He shoots a text to his dad to let him know that the man arrived, and gets out of the car.

The car is actually a truck: a rusty, battered white pickup truck that has definitely seen better days, but it’s running, and carrying a human who can hopefully help get Zayn back on the road, and it’s not smashed into the back of Zayn’s car so it’s a win all around.

The driver kicks at the door until it wrenches open, and he can step out into the freezing weather. He’s bundled up far more than Zayn, with a stocking cap underneath his hood, and gloves covering his hands, but he’s surprisingly young and far more attractive than Zayn had anticipated.

Nothing like being a damsel in distress for a hot mechanic, eh?

“Do you have a spare?” the man says, his voice pleasant.

Zayn nods. “I do, but I don’t have a jack.”

“Ah,” the man turns and stalks to the back of his truck, fumbling around in the bed before pulling a jack out.

Zayn isn’t really sure how this procedure is supposed to work, but he doubts that the mechanic would have mistaken his flat tire for another flat tire, so maybe there is no need to identify himself. The man certainly doesn’t seem concerned with it as he tugs Zayn’s spare tire from the trunk.

He frowns down at it for a few moments. “It’s flat.”

“Yeah, that’s why I need to change my tire,” Zayn agrees.

The man turns to look at him, amusement twinkling in his eyes even as his face remains serious.

“No, I mean your spare tire. It’s flat.”

“Oh.” Zayn isn’t entirely sure what to do. Should he call a backup truck to help the truck he already called? How does this kind of thing normally get handled?

“I live a few miles from here,” the man says suddenly. “I can take it back to my shop to air it up if that’s alright with you.”

Is that a normal thing that mechanics from AAA do? Zayn wonders to himself, but he doesn’t dwell for too long. He’d agree to almost anything if it got him back on the road.

“That would be great, thanks.”

The man nods, lifting the tire with one hand and the jack with the other like it’s nothing. He puts both into the bed of his truck.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promises, climbing into the cab of his truck.

Zayn gets back into his own car, sighing and rubbing his hands together to warm them up. At least this is progress he thinks as he watches the man turn off onto a side road and head east, presumably towards his shop.

His phone begins to ring, but rather than it being his dad on the phone asking for a progress report, the number that pops up is from AAA. Weird.

“Hello?” Zayn answers.

“Mr. Malik?” A chirpy voice asks from the other end, and Zayn hums in acknowledgment. “Hi, this is Felicia. I’m just calling to give you an updated ETA for your repairman. There was another delay, but he’s en route and he should be there in about thirty more minutes. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

And Zayn’s brain goes blank for a minute. He coughs once nervously.

“Thirty minutes?”

“That’s correct.”

“So,” Zayn lets his voice trail off, unsure of how to phrase his dilemma as delicately as possible. “So your mechanic isn’t the guy that just took my spare tire?”

“Excuse me?” Felicia sounds alarmed.

“A guy just stopped to help, and he said my spare was flat so he said he was going to take it to his shop. I thought he was the guy you sent and he just showed up early.”

Zayn listens as Felicia frantically types on the other end of the line for a couple moments.

“That wasn’t one of our certified mechanics,” she finally informs him.

“Fabulous,” Zayn mutters.

“It may just be a kind person? And now that your spare tire will be fixed, it will be ready to put on when our mechanic makes it to you.”

“Does your mechanic carry spare tires? Just in case?” Zayn asks wryly.

“Not usually,” Felicia chuckles, “but if there are any issues that can’t be resolved, he can take you back to your college. I don’t think I can do anything else from this end, but feel free to call back if you have any questions.”

“Sure thing,” Zayn mumbles, hanging up.

AAA is getting an F overall as far as Zayn is concerned.

He calls his dad to relay the latest update, and his dad decides that he’s just going to start driving in the direction, just in case the man never comes back. Apparently his mother wants him home as soon as possible, and Zayn can relate.

A nerve-wracking fifteen minutes pass before the man’s old truck comes back into view, turning off of the side road back towards Zayn. He does a U turn to pull up behind Zayn’s car, and Zayn is thanking every higher being for helping him not get even more stranded in the middle of nowhere.

Zayn watches in his mirrors as the man gets out of his truck and hefts the tire and jack from the bed before he gets out to join him.

The man quirks an eyebrow at Zayn but hunches down and gets to work. He’s very efficient, despite the cold, clearly practiced in his movements. He’s done in minutes, removing the jack and rising to lift the other tire into Zayn’s trunk for him.

“Thank you,” Zayn blurts out, trying his best to seem normal and not overly giddy at the prospect of being able to drive away now. “I don’t have any cash to pay you with though.”

“No problem,” the man shrugs, “I didn’t do it for money.”

Zayn nods slowly. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee then? To say thanks?”

The man looks amused and slightly endeared.

“In what town, mate? The nearest one with a coffee shop in any direction is thirty miles away.”

Zayn feels his cheeks pink, ready to call the whole thing off, but the man isn’t done speaking.

“If you want,” he starts slowly, fidgeting where he stands, “I have coffee at my house. It’s not anything fancy but it’ll warm us up. I’m heading there anyways but you’re welcome to join me.” He shrugs, as if he didn’t just invite a complete stranger into his home. Who is this guy?

But Zayn reasons that if he’s going to die via serial killer, it might as well be a young, hot one.

And he’s already late getting home, so why not.

“I’d like that,” Zayn murmurs with a soft smile, and the man smiles shyly in return.

***

The man’s name is Liam, and he isn’t what Zayn expected. He’s even more handsome when he’s not covered from head to toe in winter clothes, but he still looks like a cute marshmallow without his puffy coat. His hair is a bit matted from the hat he wore, and it’s curling up at the edges. Liam huffs as he tries to smooth it down, but it can’t be tamed. Zayn thinks it makes him even more endearing.

His house is small, definitely fitting several of Zayn’s stereotypes about a young male mechanic who lives alone. There are a few random tools in places they shouldn’t be, and dirty rags rest on the kitchen table and the counter, just waiting for Liam to use them to wipe away the worst of the dirt and grease before he makes himself something to eat.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Liam insists, waving Zayn towards the living room. “I’ll start the coffee and be right in.”

His living room is homey. A shelf of books lines one wall, and another is taken up by an entertainment center. There’s an easy chair, hinting to Liam’s bachelor lifestyle, as well as a couch with throw pillows to accommodate visitors.

Zayn settles into one corner of the couch, listening to Liam puttering around in the other room. He’s a bit on edge, but not nearly as much as he should be considering he knows nothing about Liam other than his generous nature.

The fact that he was willing to invite a random stranger over is either indicative of Liam’s own desire for company, or of his awareness of Zayn’s attractiveness, or a combination of the two, Zayn thinks.

“How do you take your coffee?” Liam calls, his voice a bit rough from the cold.

“Cream and sugar, please.”

Liam enters the room moments later, handing Zayn a steaming mug and then cradling his own to his chest as he curls up in his recliner. Zayn murmurs his thanks, taking a tiny sip and wincing as the liquid burns his tongue.

They sit in silence for a minute, but it’s not uncomfortable, just contemplative. Liam speaks first.

“So you go to Sharpton then?”

Zayn nods. “Nursing, I’m a junior.”

“Nice.” Liam looks impressed. “The program is supposed to be hard to get in to.”

“Well, yeah. It’s hard in general, but I’m surviving.”

Liam chuckles. “I’m a junior at Sharpton too,” he offers.

“Really? I’ve never seen you around but it’s a big campus,” Zayn muses. “What major?”

“Mechanical engineering.”

Zayn whistles. “So you’re a math nerd, then?”

Liam blushes, shrugging as he takes a sip of his coffee. “I just like knowing how things work. What makes them tick, ya know?”

Zayn hums. “I’m kind of the same way, but about people. I just think it’s fascinating what the body can do.” He looks up at Liam from beneath his lashes, and Liam is already looking at him with dark eyes.

“Fascinating,” he echoes slowly, clearly having caught onto the underlying meaning.

Zayn just shrugs and takes another sip of his coffee with a small smirk.

***

He leaves Liam’s house two hours later with a new number in his phone and a promise to meet up the following Tuesday for lunch.

He climbs back into his car and sets off for home. His phone is full of concerned messages from his parents and whiny ones from his sisters. He shoots one message to his dad to let him know that he’s on his way home and tosses his phone on his passenger seat.

When Zayn glances back at Liam’s house, Liam is standing in the doorway with his arms crossed against the cold, watching to make sure that Zayn gets back on the road safely just like he said he would.

As far as bad days go, this one turned out alright, Zayn thinks.

***

Its several months later when he finally decides to introduce Liam to Niall.

“So how did you two meet?” Niall asks, eyeing the couple suspiciously.

“I stopped to change Zayn’s tire because he couldn’t,” Liam says smugly. Niall quirks an eyebrow.

“Is that a euphemism about your sex life?”

Liam chokes on his coffee.

Zayn sighs. “It’s not. I told you about the flat tire I got when I went home for my birthday. He’s the guy who helped me out.” He reaches over to steal Liam’s cup, taking a drink. Liam likes his coffee just like Zayn does. It’s one of many convenient things about their relationship that they’ve discovered on their regular lunch dates and other non-lunch dates on the weekends.

Liam loves R&B and rap, is a dog person, doesn’t wear socks to bed, and his favorite superhero is Batman. He’s always warm, and he’ll cuddle Zayn at a moment’s notice with no complaints. Aka he’s the most perfect human alive for Zayn, and Zayn couldn’t be happier.

Niall hums. “I bet he helps you out a lot these days, eh? No wonder you’ve been so relaxed.”

Niall winks exaggeratedly. Zayn chokes on Liam’s coffee, Liam turns bright red, and Niall bursts out laughing.

But even as Zayn hacks up drops of coffee to stop them from reaching his lungs, Liam’s hand is squeezing his thigh, and he’s looking at Zayn with concern in his eyes and a tiny pout on his pink lips, and Zayn can’t find it in himself to be upset.

In fact, Zayn is happier than ever, because even if his roommate is a jackass, his boyfriend makes up for it. (That doesn’t mean he won’t strangle Niall when they get back to the dorm though.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! If you want, come say hi to me on [my Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ruinedbygaysstylinson)


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